5 Minutes on Leading Through Failure in Emergent Landscapes

Emergent landscapes are, to say the least, tricky.

It can be hard to even see you are in one!

It can be so uncomfortable to stay in the uncertainty and just pay attention.

It can go against our instincts to accept the mistakes and failure that are often a part of navigating through an emergent landscape.

That’s what we’re going to focus on today.

Emergent Landscape Tool #2:

Be kind and gentle with one another and forgiving about mistakes, ‘failures,’ or the need to try again. In living systems, there is no failure, just feedback.

Staying open and being willing to learn are at the heart of working with emergence.  This is so hard for humans. Failure is hard, whether it’s our own or someone else’s.

Inviting feedback is difficult. Receiving feedback is difficult. Giving feedback is difficult.

That’s why we spend a fair amount of time on this in my Supervisor Trainings.

It’s hard but it’s so important.

We know that the feedback loop of failure provides really excellent information for individuals, organizations, and systems to learn and change.

But how do we do it? How do we make sure we are kind and gentle with ourselves and others?

Three Tips for Leading Through Failure in Emergent Landscapes

1. Practice Welcoming Failure

Failure is information. It tells us something didn’t work and can point us in a different direction.

Conflict is information too. Conflict is a system showing us where change wants to happen.

When you experience failure or conflict, practice getting excited about all the juicy information you can glean from the situation.

Can you access that “ooohhh this might be helpful” feeling?

2. Practice A Neutral Stance

Maybe you can’t quite welcome feedback or conflict. Can you get… neutral?

Failure, conflict, and mistakes are just feedback, learning and data in different forms.

Notice your emotions – embarrassment, dread, fear, shame – but you don’t have to get swept up in them.

Practice taking a neutral stance by reminding yourself that all this information is going to be really useful. It will help you adapt and better see what might want to emerge next.

3. Practice Turning Judgmental Criticism Into Curiosity and Defensiveness Into Self-Exploration

These mindset shifts come from the Human System Dynamics Institute. They are powerful in so many aspects of life and work, but especially in emergent landscapes.

Feeling critical about a failure?

Practice getting curious about what went wrong and even what went right or what you would change.

Feeling defensive about a mistake?

Ask yourself why you were so convinced it would work. Explore what is keeping you from trying something different.

These three practices work best when we are kind and gentle towards ourselves and others.

Strong organizational cultures have employees that regularly give caring feedback to each other.

They recognize that we need each other to accomplish our missions. And they know that we can do our best learning and growing when we find ways to treat failures as feedback.  

The “caring” part of feedback is key.

Creating a feedback culture, means we need to stay open to adjusting our feedback if it is having a hurtful impact on others (even when we didn’t intend it).

What are you ready to do?

Can you practice welcoming failure? Get neutral? Shift from judgment to curiosity? Or turn your defensiveness into self-exploration?

Where should you focus your efforts, or your team’s efforts, in the next week or month?